Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
The theory of the relationship between events at which we have now
arrived is based first upon the doctrine that the relatednesses of an
event are all internal relations, so far as concerns that event, though
not necessarily so far as concerns the other relata. For example, the
eternal objects, thus involved, are externally related to events. This
internal relatedness is the reason why an event can be found only just
where it is and how it is,—that is to say, in just one definite set of
relationships. For each relationship enters into the essence of the
event; so that, apart from that relationship, the event would not be
itself. This is what is meant by the very notion of internal relations.
It has been usual, indeed universal, to hold that spatio-temporal
relationships are external. This doctrine is what is here denied.
The conception of internal relatedness involves the analysis of the
event into two factors, one the underlying substantial activity of
individualisation, and the other the complex of aspects—that is to say,
the complex of relatednesses as entering into the essence of the given
event—which are unified by this individualised activity. In other words,
the concept of internal relations requires the concept of substance as
the activity synthesising the relationships into its emergent character.
The event is what it is, by reason of the unification in itself of a
multiplicity of relationships. The general scheme of these mutual
relationships is an abstraction which presupposes each event as an
independent entity, which it is not, and asks what remnant of these
formative relationships is then left in the guise of external
relationships. The scheme of relationships as thus impartially expressed
becomes the scheme of a complex of events variously related as wholes to
parts and as joint parts within some one whole. Even here, the internal
relationship forces itself on our attention; for the part evidently is
constitutive of the whole. Also an isolated event which has lost its
status in any complex of events is equally excluded by the very nature
of an event. So the whole is evidently constitutive of the part. Thus
the internal character of the relationship really shows through this
impartial scheme of abstract external relations.
But this exhibition of the actual universe as extensive and divisible
has left out the distinction between space and time. It has in fact left
out the process of realisation, which is the adjustment of the synthetic
activities by virtue of which the various events become their realised
selves. This adjustment is thus the adjustment of the underlying active
substances whereby these substances exhibit themselves as the
individualisations or modes of Spinoza’s one substance. This adjustment
is what introduces temporal process.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account